


On Perfecting Them

by drvology



Category: Batman (Unspecified canon), Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:29:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drvology/pseuds/drvology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With each other, finally, neither were afraid to hold on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Perfecting Them

**Author's Note:**

> B:TAS is my favorite Batverse incarnation; it's become my default setting when imagining the characters &c. That established, I think the fic I write can be aptly labeled 'canon & time nonspecific.'  
> → Written in an hour for 60_minute_fics challenge group @ LJ || 020207 Prompt #2 _OTP -- Just admit yours to the world, and write us a 60 minute ode to the couple you think everyone in their right mind should be rooting for._

This is how I see it, and you certainly needn't take my word on it. Even though I am what you should well consider the closest to an expert on such matters as you will ever find.

They are capable, intelligent, brave young men.

Both had everything a child thinks and wants to ask for, far beyond the material, with the love of kind parents and the calm security of following a life comfortable and chosen. They each had that taken away--lost it all--then remade happiness and reordered their lives so when everything was found once more it was captured and kept.

With each other, finally, neither were afraid to hold on, and neither suffered the compulsion to cling too tight.

Both are as stubborn and willful and infuriating as all get out. Loyal and kind like mercy, and their true measure is they hide their greatest feats and feel they cannot outrun their greatest faults. In a word--or a few, rather, forgive my imprecision--they are perfect. For making one another absolutely, miserably crazy.

Wonderfully crazy, as they are and they need.

No one eased the pain of Master Bruce's loss so simply, for who they were and what they too had endured, as when Master Dick came into our lives. And, for all his faults, there was no one better suited to understanding Dick's boyhood uncertainties and fears borne of the same brutal loss than Bruce. Dick came alive under Bruce's watch, and Bruce returned to life for Dick.

Mercurial as the weather, as the ocean's passing fancy--and whereas Bruce sinks to darkness Dick clings to overbright--each comes untethered and drifts too far, perilously in danger of being forever surrendered to persecuted shade or false light if not held in check.

Again, perfection. In what they carry, balance, honor and allow.

Certainly it began when Master Dick was too young. With certainty I knew it would happen, nurtured what I felt I could, left the rest to the providence that brought them together in the first place. What they did and who they were--at night out there, at night upstairs--made them more the same than not, gave them a need for one another most, perhaps not even I, can understand. What created them into being so alike, then united their destinies erased age and innocence, well before either entertained thoughts of more; their whole selves were devoted, one to the other, from the very beginning.

There are reasons for all things; that, just as certain.

It might have started too young but nothing of it was wrong, nor unexpected, and the only force applied was to Bruce's thick skull. His every happiness is in that boy, and he earns that by being that boy's everything. Every year older is a year closer, one blending with the other, this eventuality inexorable as breath and promise. Somewhere there--lingering touches and Dick slipped surreptitious into the master bed at nearly fifteen, honest smiles and something pure found--is mitigation for any perceived lapse and the true faults in judgment. Forgiveness, warm acceptance, and they'd not have made it or had it any other way, besides. I am rarely one to clamor against the tides.

I did mention their stubbornness, and my expertise in such matters.

Do not be mistaken that perfection implies all is perfectly well. There are shadows, here; how could it be any different, as these are men of shadows, more real among them than anywhere else but each other. Their pride, Dick's impulsive courage and Bruce's methodical heroism, their dogged determination. It gets them into almost as much trouble as the respect they command, then wield.

Dick fears Bruce will never see him as anything but a child. Bruce fears ever letting Dick go lest he grow up and grow away. Dick wants only to be noticed, and because of that his temper and tantrums drive him to the immaturity he loathes, back to the boy he's tried to banish for so long. Bruce wants to hide from everything but Dick, and because of that his terror runs him aground, maroons him just out of reach from Dick's calming, powerful sway.

Foolish, the both of them. It's a damned good thing they have me. Better, one can suppose, that they have each other.

I would maintain Master Bruce; his morning tea and paper, his selves, his suits, the hollow order of his days. We are friends and he is something of a son to me--and I never his father--and in that there would be familiarity, ease of being, for all its lack of passion.

I could have raised Master Dick; letters and numbers and frowned at his long hair, assisted him in choosing peanut butter or ham and cheese for lunch and which university would best suit his needs. We are close and he and I share a fond kinship--one that wouldn't quite be without our shared fondness for Bruce--and in that there would be a place for him and an affectionate, willing chore for me.

I prefer being their trusted confidante, the Butler. The indispensable, all-knowing, inscrutable fixture of the family that leaves them to each other their everything, maintains that and them and all of their secrets. The errant moans and urgent noises in the Manor at night, the men they are and the people they pretend to be, their fights and mistakes, their irrationalities and their weaknesses, their majestic strength and their triumphs. The lives we lead and the love and duty they quietly abide. They hold each other, and I hold them together.

Perfectly.


End file.
